---
title: "Director of Developer Relations"
description: "Leads the team that builds a company's relationship with software developers through documentation, community programs, events and technical content."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/director-of-developer-relations"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Director of Developer Relations

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-2021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-2021.00

Leads the team that builds a company's relationship with software developers through documentation, community programs, events and technical content.

Also advertised as: Head of Developer Relations; VP of Developer Relations; Developer Relations Director; Head of DevRel.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $166,790 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $80.19/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $90,260 to $293,610, with the middle half between $123,020 and $216,410
- **Total US employment:** 395,240
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.9% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 34,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 36/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 395,240 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $90,260 |
| 25th | $123,020 |
| 50th (median) | $166,790 |
| 75th | $216,410 |
| 90th | $293,610 |
| Mean (average) | $177,770 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| MA | $212,020 | $200,478 | 14,270 |
| CA | $193,620 | $174,874 | 54,660 |
| VA | $187,820 | $185,769 | 6,890 |
| CO | $182,730 | $177,318 | 6,010 |
| NY | $181,200 | $167,901 | 54,000 |
| NJ | $180,040 | $165,470 | 13,510 |
| DC | $177,170 | $161,209 | 3,470 |
| MN | $173,300 | $175,723 | 8,500 |
| WA | $172,270 | $160,980 | 8,880 |
| CT | $169,240 | $163,343 | 5,800 |
| SD | $167,750 | $189,364 | 220 |
| MT | $165,580 | $174,948 | Not published by BLS |
| NC | $165,480 | $175,434 | 10,790 |
| IL | $162,860 | $162,928 | 21,140 |
| WY | $161,580 | $174,321 | 100 |

35 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 50 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/director-of-developer-relations/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/director-of-developer-relations.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 421,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 450,800 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 29,100 jobs, or +6.9%. Faster than average: 6.9% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 34,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** 5 years or more.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

## What the work involves

- Set developer relations strategy and goals
- Hire and manage developer advocates, writers and community managers
- Oversee documentation, tutorials and sample code
- Plan conference talks, hackathons and community programs
- Bring developer feedback to product and engineering teams
- Measure adoption and community health and report results
- Represent the company at developer events and in online communities

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Persuasion — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 4.70 |
| S — Social | 3.71 |
| A — Artistic | 3.64 |
| I — Investigative | 2.90 |
| R — Realistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 73.4 |
| ENTJ | 69.8 |
| ESFJ | 68.2 |
| ESTJ | 62.8 |
| ESFP | 60.1 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ENTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Marketing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marketing-manager) — median $166,790
- [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) — median $78,760
- [Sales Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager) — median $148,270
- [Advertising and Promotions Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-and-promotions-manager) — median $133,660
- [Search Marketing Strategist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/search-marketing-strategist) — median $78,760
- [Advertising Sales Agent](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-sales-agent) — median $64,820
- [Business Intelligence Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/business-intelligence-analyst) — median $120,230
- [Public Relations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-manager) — median $146,910
- [Public Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-specialist) — median $74,750
- [Purchasing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager) — median $148,080

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/director-of-developer-relations